1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to generating alternative user inputs. More specifically, systems and methods to generate modified or refined user inputs based on an original user input, such as a search query, are disclosed.
2. Description of Related Art
Many users often modify or refine, sometimes repeatedly, their original search query during a given search session. For example, the user may modify an original search query to a more specific search query, a broader search query, and/or a search query using alternative query terms until desired search results are generated. User search query refinement occurs with queries in Roman-based languages, e.g., English, as well as with queries in non-Roman-based languages, e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Korean (CJK), Thai, etc. Users typically modify or refine their search queries when the original search query did not yield a good set of search results, e.g., if the search query is too specific or too broad or if the search query used improper terms. For example, the original user search query may yield too many irrelevant results when one or more of the search terms are ambiguous and some of the returned documents are related to a meaning of the ambiguous search term that is different from what the user intended and/or when the user is interested in only one aspect of a given search term among the many aspects of the search term. The original user search query may also yield too many irrelevant results when the user is merely exploring concepts related to a given search term.
Many search engines offer a list of suggested search queries related the user's original search query. For example, if a user's original search query is “Amazon,” the search engine may suggest other related search queries such as “Amazon.com”, “Amazon Rainforest”, and “Amazon River.” Search query suggestion may be particularly useful for non-Roman based language users such as CJK users. Specifically, non-Roman based language users may prefer clicking or selecting a suggested search query over typing modified search queries because non-Roman-based languages generally have a large set of characters and each character may require several keystrokes using a conventional Roman-based keyboard. For example, many Chinese language users use pinyin (phonetic spelling) to input Chinese characters. The conventional pinyin input system typically converts a pinyin input and provides a list of candidate Chinese character sets from which the user may select the intended set of Chinese characters. As is evident, the multi-step input process may be tedious and time-consuming.
Search query suggestion may also be useful for Roman-based language users. Many search engines, such as Yahoo!, TEOMA, ALTA VISTA, ASKJEEVES, ALLTHEWEB, and BAIDU offer such a feature in the form of related search, query refinement, or query clustering.